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The House
In the slave markets, Lau searches for clues to his sister's whereabouts. There, he buys an unwanted gnome slave named Kojo and takes him to a local tavern, learning that Kojo may have seen his sister. Meanwhile, Roach and Hachiman visit the archaeologist Doctor Quintus Morrow, who informs the two that a nothic recently broke into his house and stole many of his notes on the Blood King. He asks them to track the nothic down, promising to give Roach more information on the Blood King once everything has been recovered. After some time, they eventually find the creature in an abandoned cellar and swiftly kill it in its sleep. From the outside, however, somebody attempts to trap them in the cellar, forcing Roach to blast the locked doors from its hinges. Roach and Hachiman follow the bootprints of their would-be trapper, deducing that they belong to a dainty woman. They then reconvene with Lau and Kojo at Quintus's townhouse, with Lau wishing to further explore the house above the abandoned cellar, wondering if the dainty woman is somehow his sister. Before leaving, though, Roach discovers through translating Quintus's cryptic texts that the location of the Blood King's tomb is kept within an ancient elven library called the Archive, located in the Amethyst Mountains. When asked where this might be, Quintus admits that there are several conflicting theories on where the mountains could be located. He himself has never been able to find out with certainty. Still, he offers his gratitude to Roach for translating the previously unreadable texts and discovering the existence of the Archive. Roach, Lau, and Hachiman then ask residents living near the abandoned cellar if they had seen a woman wearing boots in the area, with all of them claiming to have no memory of seeing such a person. The only thing the party is told is that the house and the cellar in question once belonged to Old Man Demek, before the League kicked him out and took possession of it. Suspecting something afoot, the three sleuths break into the sealed house and come across a menacing ritual circle on the second floor. Copies of Doctor Morrow's notes on the Blood King are also found, and it is made apparent to the party that whomever made the circle also commanded the nothic in the cellar and was attempting to contact a devil for unclear purposes. Moments later, two masked strangers suddenly manifest within Demek's living room, attacking the party without hesitation. One of them knocks out Roach and vanishes, while another is cleaved in half by Hachiman's greataxe. While invisible or not being looked at, the strangers are able to erase themselves (either partially or fully) from the memories of their witnesses. Most of the party learns this as their encounter with the masked strangers becomes increasingly more difficult to remember. With Roach unconscious, Hachiman and Lau decide to take him to safety, with Hachiman also taking the corpse of one of the strangers with him. As they leave the house through the window, however, they find themselves surrounded by guards alerted to their illegal break-in. Category:Episodes Category:Chapter One